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2017: The year we’ll have our first home-grown electric car, the Dendrobium

Electric Dreaming

With the promise of over 1,000bhp and a century sprint time below three seconds, Vanda Electrics’Dendrobium’s performance is electric. And that expression isn’t just ﬁgurative.

Vanda Electrics’ Dendrobium

The all-electric supercar is set for a launch at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show, and in addition to its blistering performance ﬁgures and space-age design (CEO Larissa Tan admits some elements of its design and performance will change before its motor show unveiling), it’s also home-grown, the brainchild of a Singaporean company.

Interestingly enough, Vanda Electrics also makes the Ant, a mini-truck capable of hauling a one-tonne payload, and the Motochimp scooter.

Where does Dendrobium ﬁt in the Vanda Electrics line-up?
It’s a lighthouse project for us, a key part of our branding and marketing strategy. As a start-up, we have a certain amount of money to spend on that, so we asked ourselves, ‘where do we spend it’. We decided the best way to spend it was to embark on a project that could showcase the brand on a global scale.

This is a highly ambitious goal for a ﬁrst-time supercar manufacturer. Are you conﬁdent of meeting public expectations of such cars?
It’s a long-term strategy for us – we’re going to launch the car whether people are going to be receptive to it or not. That said, we’ve received good feedback on Dendrobium’s design and specs since it was ﬁrst revealed, and also interest in buying it once it’s ready. We probably won’t build more than 10 or 20. The way we see it, we’re moving towards electriﬁcation, and maybe in the next 20 years, owning an electric vehicle will be a necessity.

Other supercars have a pedigree behind them, but Dendrobium doesn’t. Do you see this as a problem?
We are new, we can’t hide that fact. Yes, there are lots of big players with a very strong heritage and brand, who can say they’ve done great things in the last 50 or 100 years. But we’re new, we’re fresh and we’re edgy. There’s a lot of thought that went into Dendrobium’s design, the materials we used. We’re not trying to make a quick buck from this, we want to sell something that’s going to last.

Who do you see as your primary target for Dendrobium?
There are lots of people who collect supercars, and I think Geneva is the best place to attract that sort of buyer. People who understand the engineering and the story behind the car. We can’t say a lot right now, but there’s a backstory to the car and how it came about.